There was some rumor going around about a Space Jam sequel last week starring LeBron
James. Now, I hated that movie. I didn't even like it in the ironic way that
some people like it because it was badly acted or whatever. But anyway, the guy who directed Space Jam was a legendary ad director
named Joe Pytka, who got the job because he also directed the original
Jordan/Bugs Bunny Super Bowl ad. And the
rumor about Pytka was that he was a bastard (shocking for a director, I know)
who always required that his Ferrari be parked close by the set for his
personal use, Michael Bay-style. So if
you were gonna shoot an ad in, like, Peru, you had to bring Pytka's Ferrari
there and have it ready to go. Otherwise, PYTKA WALKS, MOTHERFUCKER.

According to Deadline, a sequel to Space Jam is in the planning stages, and it would star LeBron.…
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Anyway, here are your letters:

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Eric:

I'm from Texas. I
have never been to New York City or plan to. Nothing about an overcrowded,
overpriced city full of east coast assholes sounds appealing to me. Can
you make a case for why it's the best city in the world?

Of course. There's a
reason eight million jackasses crowd into NYC voluntarily. If you're in your 20s and you don't
really give a shit about being broke, New York is the place for you. You can find good cheap food. There's ALWAYS someone around to drink
with. There are 50 million things you
can do, all of which you'll reject because you're lazy. And the city has that fabled energy that
draws people in. It's one
giant spotlight shining in the sky. Whenever
I see the New York skyline from an airplane window, I want to jump out of that
plane and GET IN ON THE ACTION. It tends
to have that effect on people. Being in
New York means treating the rest of the world like it has perpetual #FOMO. You're in New York, and everyone else
isn't. That arrogance of that town rubs
off on everyone INSTANTLY, which is fun!

There was a plastic tent in front of the aircraft carrier and a man in a black sport coat was…
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The other reason that people love New York is because it
offers the illusion of endless opportunity.
You go to New York, and you think, Oh
hey, maybe I'll get a job as Sigourney Weaver's pissboy, and then she'll break
her leg skiing and I'll be resourceful enough to do her job while she's
recovering. Then Harrison Ford will want
to nail me, Oren Trask will offer me a cushy office gig, and I'll be on my way
to unlimited riches! LETTTTTT THE RIVER
RUN!!!! There's that lingering idea
that you can go to New York and become hot shit like Frank Sinatra or Jay Z or
some other terrible person. Of course,
that usually doesn't happen. Usually,
you end up saying "Fuck this shit," and then you go back and become
the manager at a toothpaste factory in Ohio.
But as long as you're there, you can delude yourself into thinking it
CAN happen.

Anyway, if you're into that kind of energy, New York is the
best place ever. But that charm tends to
wear off once you've been pushed around on a subway platform, or forced to pay
$15 for a drink, or had your toddler be pre-interviewed for a $70,000-a-year
nursery school. Being in New York means
you're competing with the world's money: Every Eurotrash dickhead, every
Russian oligarch, every Chinese industrialist.
They're all there to drop PILES of cash.
You don't stand a chance. It gets
incredibly depressing after a while to live somewhere like that, where you walk
by some $300 prix fixe joint every night and it's PACKED. You become lonely in your relative
poorness. But until those suicidal urges
arise... BEST CITY EVER. And if you're
from Texas, you ain't one to throw stones.
I've seen Texas.

Drew:

Given that online dating allows you to highly screen someone
before ever meeting them in person, are today's woman way more pickier than a
generation prior, willing only to meet up with a guy if he meets all of her
criteria? If you go back to the mid-90s, as a pre-Internet example, how were
young single women different back then? Were they more willing to flirt with
random guys in bars? Have smartphones and social media made women so 'innerly
focused' on their existing social network that they're much less willing to
interact with new guys in the real world?

I doubt it. Everyone
is picky until they get hard up, and the nice thing about online dating is that
it encourages both men and women to get to know—albeit virtually—as many
people as possible. The more people you
know, the more people you're willing to meet.
I've seen Tinder
in action. Trust me: YOU ARE FUCKING
BLESSED. You know what I would have paid
to have Tinder in my life 20 years ago?
Holy shit.

I have one single friend left and he did Tinder in front of
me and I damn near shat myself. A couple
of swipes and BINGO BANGO, he was text flirting with a new galpal. It was devastating. One magical little app and suddenly all of
your anxieties about meeting new women, all of the "Is that girl looking
at me because she likes me or because I have a booger on my shirt?"
questions you ask yourself at a bar... all of that is gone. I feel like I just spent the first quarter
century of my life blindfolded.

I know that there's no such thing as a blind date
anymore. I know that maybe women are a
little bit more wary of meeting any man cold when they have access to highly
polished background checks on thousands of other nearby guys. But that's a relatively small price to pay
for the exponential increase in access to potential mates out there. You bastards.

Aaron:

I have this thing, I call it 'Phantom Announcer Excitement',
where every time I get up in the middle of a game and get far enough away from
the TV so that it's a little muffled, I instantly hear Doc Emrick getting riled
up. I naturally run back to the TV, only to find nothing has happened. Is there
a cure for this?

Not really, because even if you're used to the excitability
of someone like Doc Emrick or Gus Johnson, you're still gonna hate yourself if
you don't respond like a dog to their increased pitch and then miss out on
something. One day, you'll get up to
grab an iced tea, and then Emrick will start shouting, and you'll be like,
"Eh, he's just crying wolf," only to then miss eight consecutive
goals scored. (FUN FACT: I have never actually witnessed a goal in hockey; it
always happens when I bend over to pick up a quarter or something.) There's no worse feeling than missing out on
important sportsness as it happens.

I don't blame Emrick for being excitable, because both
hockey and soccer are sports where a shot on goal counts as a legitimately
tense moment. For every goal scored,
there are two hundred corresponding HOLY FUCK HE MIGHT SCORE moments, and both
those sports thrive on that kind of blueballing. They are sports that require constant vigilance,
which can be a detriment when I want to check Twitter and/or make a sandwich
(football and baseball, with five thousand stoppages in play, are far more accommodating
to my attention span). You'll just have
to keep running in whenever you hear the announcer go soprano. It's the nature of the sport.

Wil:

Say the dark underlord himself wants to make you a deal, you
get to be the greatest QB the league has ever known... multiple Super Bowls,
pages and pages of league records, a sure-fire HOFer, there's just one caveat:
At least once per quarter you have loudly yell out something extremely racist
during the snap count. If you ever forget your racist snap count or if you tell
ANYONE that you're not really racist or that it's a deal you made with Satan,
you lose your super QB powers at some point during the next game, your leg goes
all Joe Theisman while getting sacked and Ndamukong Suh stomps on your nuts. Keep
in mind that you're so good that the second a team gets tired of the drama and
cuts you, you're instantly picked up by somebody else. You're so good that even
screaming out phrases that make the Mississippi Grand Dragon blush during
nationally-televised games can't keep you off the field.

Wouldn't I be suspended though? That's
a rule now. You get 15 yards for
racism (and even though I know the refs won't do it, I DESPERATELY want them to
announce that the 15-yarder was specifically for use of the N-word), so my open
prejudice would cost the team 60 yards per game. And if you can promise I won't get penalized,
I would still probably reject Satan's deal.
What's the fun of being a hotshot QB if everyone hates your guts? That's like being Eli Manning right now. NO THANK YOU.

I am someone for whom sports were a means to an end. Yes, it's fun to play football if you're good
at it. But it's even MORE fun to meet
hot women and be crazy popular at school and make shitloads of money because
you happen to play football well. That's
the incentive that sports provides to young Americans: Be good at sports, and
untold GLORY BOY hosannas await you. If
you're telling me I can't have that; that I'll walk off the field every game
the most despised player in America, with boos and full beer cups raining down
on me... That's not worth it, and even the dumbest person alive knows it. I
assume John Rocker's got some money left in the bank. Would you have wanted his life? Fuck and no.

What would have happened if Jason Collins went insane and
tried to grope 3 or 4 of his teammates in the shower? Would there be a coverup
by BIG GAY?

OMG EVERYONE'S WORST FEARS COME TRUE! I knew Jason Collins was playing basketball
just so he could have a free view of NBA player dong! It just makes sense.

Obviously, this would be a setback for pretty much
everyone. Collins' career would
end. GMs and coaches would be scared off
from ever having gay players in the locker room. His offended teammates would probably react
with great anger and then people would get mad at them for reacting with great
anger. Then we'd all take up arms and the
final GAY HOLY WAR would take place at long last.

I watched the video of Collins walking onto the court for
the first time and his reception was muted because a) obviously, it's not that a
big deal and shouldn't be, b) at the end of the day, you're watching a shitty
basketball player sub in to go play some shitty basketball, and c) everyone was
probably terrified. No one in that arena
was gonna be dumb enough to boo Collins or say something terrible to him
because they knew all eyes were on that crowd response. And I bet people didn't want to clap too loud
because they were probably like Well, I
shouldn't clap A LOT because a person's sexuality shouldn't matter in this day
and age, by gar! It was the world's
most careful welcoming party, like a WASP summer picnic. Just twelve thousand people all making like Jim
Nantz and trying to be as milquetoast as possible.

Mike:

Was Cinderella the
original gold-digger? She's this poor girl dressed in rags & stuck in
the basement washing dishes. Then a magic fairy lady gives her pretty
clothes for some reason and she ends up marrying the prince. Disney's whole
brand is based on "Cinderella's Castle" in Florida, but Cinderella
married into the family who owned the castle, right? She just shows up at her
husband's castle and immediately gets all the credit and riches that
come w/owning that castle which is bullshit, right?

Yes, but she had strong Republican
worker feet, which makes all the difference. Cinderella
isn't about gold-digging; it's a loving, timeless story about how you deserve
to get lots of money and hot prince dong so long as you aren't ugly, because
ugly people are mean and gross. What
child couldn't learn from such an example?

Todd:

How late can you arrive to work and how early can you leave
before you get reprimanded/fired for it? Is there an appropriate time window?
Let's say you show up on time and leave on time one day a week, does that
cancel out all the other later arrivals and early departures?

No, because then a pattern of behavior has been
established. Sounds like you don't really
want it, son. You're a
low motor guy! As always, it depends
on your place of work. If you work for a
boss who is cool and recognizes that you are an efficient fellow who CRUSHES
those TPS reports and doesn't need to stay late, well then you're probably all
right.

Guys, I'm concerned about Jadeveon Clowney. Oh sure, he ran a sub-4.5 40 today at the combine…
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However, chances are you work for an asshole who demands you
be the first to show up to work and the last to leave. I used to work in an office, and that moment
of hesitation before you tell your boss you're leaving is agony. A lot of times, it would take me 10 minutes
just to muster up the sack to say it.
Like, you want to make that little announcement as quickly and as
casually as possible. "Boss, I
think we're in good shape so I'm gonna cut out K THANKS BYE." Sometimes, I would just walk out and not even
say anything. Then my phone would ring
30 minutes later and I would shit my pants.
Going back to work after you left earlier than you were supposed to is
its own horrible walk of shame.

Anyway, I think you can probably keep the boss happy if, in
general, you keep similar hours to him.
If you don't, either he'll fire you OR—and this is worse—he'll assume
you're so efficient that you can assume more of a workload. You really want to milk easy assignments for
extra time and then rush through the important, work-intensive shit. That way, you're always being productive, but
not too productive.

HALFTIME!

Sean:

Theory: The Manning brothers are competing each week
to have the most disgusted/downtrodden/sad/Manningest face. They have to
know that Manning Face is a thing and they have proven to have a sense of
humor. What are the odds that the Manning brothers have made a game out
of this?

That wouldn't surprise me, given that Peyton is a notorious
wiseass and given that we all like to make jokes about the Manningface when
it's just what Peyton's face looks like when he isn't particularly happy. What other fucking face is he supposed to
make after he throws a pick for a touchdown?
I bet every quarterback everywhere frowns after doing that. It just happens to be that Peyton Manning is
uglier than your average quarterback, which is why you never hear people being
like LULZ BRADYFACE anytime Tom Brady fucks up.
The Mannings are naturally goofy looking creatures, but they're not
doing anything out of the ordinary there.
Not like the Spurrier lip flap!

Cameron:

What % of gifts do kids actually play with longer than one
week after Christmas?

Probably 10 percent.
All your kid really wants is the big gift they asked for—the Xbox, the
American Girl Doll, whatever—and the rest is useless to them. They get the sugar rush of opening shit and
then it's instantly off their radar. You're
giving them garbage, basically. Oh here, have some garbage! Then I can take it out of its package and we'll
have MORE garbage. Many times, I'll
have to re-introduce a toy to my child.
"Hey, remember this piece of shit I gave you? Let's play with this piece of shit to bleed
the clock!" Most of the time, they have no interest, unless it's jusssssst
before bedtime and they suddenly require that one thing you gave them three
years ago that you don't even remember giving them—you hadn't even heard them
speak of it until just that moment—but now they won't move a fucking inch
without it.

I've said it before: Every necessary toy and/or baby supply
has already been made and purchased.
Every stroller. Every fucking
train set. Everything. The Little Tikes plant only stays in
operation because people are too scared of old boogery toys to buy them
used. Basically, we're filling the
oceans with old Transformers because Mommy McDipshit doesn't want to power
clean them or is too lazy to hit up a yard sale*.

(*In fairness, going to yard sales is horrible.)

Matt:

My wife and I just had our first child three months ago, a
boy. Is it weird to wish that there were adult versions of all of his clothes
that I could wear? Seriously, pretty much everything he puts on looks amazing,
especially now that it's winter. They look like the most comfortable garments
ever conceived of. Today, my wife put him in something that I could only
describe as a full body sweat pant – a sartorial revelation, if you ask
me.

Oh, like the fleecy footie unitard they wear to bed? LUXURY.
I think they do sell those things for adults but no one buys them
because you look like an insane person.
Also, children can sleep in eight layers of fleece without any awareness
of their own body heat. If I sleep in an
abnormally thick pair of boxers, I'll wake up in a fucking lake. My kids will sleep in a t-shirt and flannel
PJs and a bathrobe while under an electric blanket. They're crazy.

But yes, those do look like comfortable clothes. Lord knows I would like to walk around in
sweatpants and a t-shirt with a giant airplane on it... Oh wait, I'm wearing
that right now. I appear to have some
growing up to do. Wearing clothes like that looks fun in theory but is ill-advised
in practice.

By the way, if you you're jealous of your son's clothes,
imagine the sartorial jealousy that women experience. The girls section of your local TJ Maxx is
80 times the size of the boys section. Lacy frocks and polka dot skirts and
peace sign overalls... Girls can pull off looks that women would DIE to co-opt
for themselves. This is why Zooey
Deschanel wears the shit she wears.
Women want daughters more than men want sons based on the clothing
factor alone.

Krager:

What country has the most flagrantly awful racist past? Whose history is/continues to be the
most embarrassing?

Isn't it a 200-way tie between all of the nations of
the world? There are so many worthy
candidates between Germany and South Africa and the UK and the US and Rwanda
and Japan and Iraq... You're talking about some impressive genocidal resumes
right there. Racism and slavery and
grotesque human rights violations are part of our shared history as a species,
so to single out one country as head and shoulders above the rest... well that
doesn't seem fair to the other nominees, who have worked REALLY hard to kill
their own citizens and invade tiny island republics.

I think that America gets honorable mention in this contest because a) like most other Americans, I overinflate our importance in every regard, and b) we are a melting pot of oppression.
We've oppressed Indians, black people, gays, Communists, immigrants...
we even oppressed the fucking Irish, who are the adorable ginger mascots of the
Caucasian world. I think you get points
for diversifying your hatred, but lose points for acknowledging your past, as
we (sometimes) do. I would rank the most
embarrassing racist histories like so:

Germany

South Africa

USA

England

Spain

Russia

Turkey

The Balkans

Japan

Sudan

There you go. We just
compressed centuries of human suffering down to one stupid listicle, which
makes us good people! Somewhere there's
a really smug Canadian out there happy to point out that his nation doesn't
belong anywhere near this list. You have
secrets, Canada. I know it.

Chip:

Why does hotel cable suck so much? Not the channel
lineup, but the performance. It takes 3-4 seconds between pushing the
power button and when the TV fully powers up and then there is the 2-3 second
lag time between selecting a channel and when that channel actually displays.
There is also usually no guide on the TV through which I can scroll to
view what's on. I'm currently 20 minutes into Battleship because I don't
have the gumption to change the channel on this piece of junk. It could
take me 10 minutes to find something!

I've had hotels where the channel system is this bizarre
hyphenate thing where ABC is on channel 8-2 and ESPN is on channel 5-3 or some
shit. It's baffling. And the strange thing is that if you visit
the hotel gym, the TV channels operate on a completely different system from
your room. As if they went to great
lengths to secure a different cable provider for that gym just to fuck with
your head. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER,
HOTELS.

I think that hotels purposely make your cable slow so that
you'll order a movie instead, porn or otherwise. That's why the whole goddamn setup is
designed to bring you back to the MENU screen any time you dare to turn the TV
off. I just spent nine hours trying to
find something decent to watch, and now I gotta go through the channels all
over again? You've got some nerve, BIG
HOTEL.

When I go to a hotel, I almost always turn on the TV to ESPN
and then leave it there so I don't have to try to find it again. In other words, I probably wasted enough
power to keep an elementary school lit just so I don't have to wait three
seconds to flip to a channel I don't even like watching. AMERICA FUCK YEAH.

Aaron:

I had to take a drunk driving class once in Marshalltown,
Iowa (to be clear, they were teaching us how to NOT drive drunk so we could get
our licenses back). The class was something like four hours on Friday evening,
after which I returned to the nearby town where I went to college and got
wasted. Saturday was another nine hours starting at 8 AM, so I had my ride
stop at a Kum & Go (that's
the local gas station chain) to I could get a sausage egg and cheese
breakfast sandwich. Big mistake.

The combination of the sandwich and my massive hangover left
me in crippling agony a half hour into class. Our instructor gave us hourly
breaks and asked us not to leave otherwise, and he was cool and skipped over
some of the really cheesy parts of the curriculum so I tried to respect his
request even as I struggled with searing gas pains. Things got very, very dire
as the pressure built up above my sphincter, my grundle quaking in effort to
stay closed and sweat pouring down my face.

Somehow I was able to let some gas out without shitting
myself (a feat I look back on in amazement. A decade later, that poop would
have been in my pants for sure). The smell was wretched and it wasn't really a
mystery who had produced it— the guy who was trembling, red-faced, sweating
and almost crying in his seat was the obvious culprit. But I thought since I
had relieved some of the pressure I might be able to make it. Nope— a few
minutes later, the process repeated itself and my classmates were staring
daggers at me for fouling up the room like that. No one wants to spend their
Saturday sitting in Marshalltown being lectured about the dangers of alcohol,
let alone be assaulted by a fetid, rotten odor that could have come straight
from Satan's rectum.

Finally as the pressure built for the third time I bolted
out of the class as fast as I could waddle and just destroyed the men's room. I
was still sitting in there ten minutes later excavating the remnants when the
rest of class took their break and some came in to use the restroom, just in
case there had been any doubt as to who had been polluting the class.